http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6kOTIXAxo4

Dr. Jim Anderson investigates how a speaker’s posture can impact their breathing and speaking speed.

Dr. Anderson reveals how speakers can take control of how they breath while giving a speech in order to impact their speaking speed and prevent themselves from running out of breath half-way through their speech.

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When Speakers Hear Their Own Voice, They Need To Make A Decision...

We’ve all had that moment of disbelief – you know the one, when someone recorded you saying something and then played it back to you. You listened to the voice coming out of the speaker and you did what we all do – you winced and said “No way that’s me!” However, yes it was you – as you sound to everyone but yourself. Ouch!

From that moment on, you were forever changed. Just like in that move “The Matrix“, you had taken the red pill and now you couldn’t ever turn back – you now know how your voice sounds to others.

Nancy Meyer is a national speaker and author who has spent a lot of time looking into why we sound different to ourselves than we do to others. I think that she’s solved this mystery.

Nancy says that the reason that we sound so different to ourselves has three reasons: your inner ear, your outer ear, and where your voice comes from. Of course, that’s not quite enough info for you to do anything about it. So lets dive in just a bit deeper and find out what all of this means.

• Your Inner Ear: Your speaking voice originates in the middle of your neck. You expel air which then passes through your vocal cords, gets magnified in your voice box, resonates in the cavities in your head and then the sound exits out your nose and / or  mouth. Your inner ear (the part that actually “hears” sounds) is located quite close to all of this so only you get to hear your voice as it starts out.
• Your Outer Ear: So here’s something that you may not have thought of – you don’t actually hear the sounds coming out of your mouth. If you think about this, your ears are in the wrong place to hear what’s coming out of your mouth. Instead, what happens is that the sounds that come out of your mouth shoot out, bounce off of something, and then get picked up by your ears. This means that what you are actually hearing is really the sound of your voice plus a lot of extra noises.
• Where Your Voice Comes From: Since you are creating the sounds that you speak in your throat, these vibrations end up rattling your entire head. This means that the parts of your ear that pick up sound are getting bounced around just by the very fact that you are speaking. This changes what you hear.

So this all leads to the big question: what if you don’t like the voice that others are hearing coming out of your mouth? In all honesty, there’s not a lot that you can do.

The key recommendation is that you don’t change your voice drastically – small changes are the best. You can practice with a tape recorder making changes and then playing them back. If you still don’t like what you are hearing then it may be time to go out an invest in a vocal coach. You should hear what you’ve been missing!

Have you ever hear a recording of your voice? How did it sound to you? Do you wish that you sounded different? Have you ever tried to change how your voice sounds to other? Did it work? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Sometimes You Still Have To Speak When You Are Having A REALLY Bad Day

The real secret to giving a good presentation is for the presenter to be “up” and have a great deal of energy. Under the best of circumstances, this can be a challenge to do, if you’ve had a really bad day it can appear to be darn near impossible.

So what’s a presenter to do? Fran Capo is a motivational speaker / comedian who has had to face these types of situations. Ultimately it’s all mental – you’ve got to get yourself into the right frame of mind. Sounds easy doesn’t it? In reality if you don’t know how to do this, it can be quite hard.

Fran has a number of suggestions for how we can gather our wits about ourselves on the worst days of our lives and still deliver a knockout presentation:

1. Breath Correctly: when things start to go bad for us we screw up our breathing – we take many short breaths. Realize this and stop, take a moment to focus on your breath, and take a few deep, long breaths. This will start to calm you down.
2. Adjust Your Attitude: How you choose to view a situation is entirely up to you. No matter how bad the day has been so far, you are in control of how the rest of it turns out. Realizing this and forcing yourself to think positively is the key to making your presentation come off perfectly.
3. Put It In A Box: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten bad news just before I was to go on and give a presentation. In order to prevent life’s little hand grenades from destroying your presentation, you need to learn to put your negative emotions in a box and slam it shut when you don’t have time to worry about them.  However, be sure to open it later on and process your emotions when you have the time.

We can’t prevent life from handing us lemons before, during, or after our presentations. However, with a little care and some understanding of how we deal with bad news, the show can still go on.

Have you ever had to give a speech when you were having the worst day ever? How did you collect yourself to get ready? Was the speech a success or a disaster? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Good Posture Helps Breathing And Allows You To Give A Great Speech

So when was the last time that you spent any time thinking about how you breath? I’m going to guess that it was sometime when you couldn’t get air – underwater, someone sitting on your chest, bag over your head, etc. Since you are reading these words, I’m going to guess that somehow you were able to get that next precious gasp of air and that you’ve probably not paid any attention to the whole breathing thing since then. However, maybe it’s time that you did…

We’ve all been in the audience when someone gives a speech for the first time. Generally, it doesn’t go very well. One big reason for the disappointing results is that they are generally quite nervous and end up talking VERY fast as they race to get it over and be allowed to sit down again. As you can probably guess, this is exactly the wrong way to deliver a speech and their breathing has a lot to do with it.

So what’s really going on here? Speakers don’t show up thinking “Hmm, I bet that if I talk really, really fast things will go well for me.” Instead, they are victims of their own bodies. It all starts with feeling nervous, this releases chemicals into your system that makes your heart start to beat faster. Your breath then follows suit by becoming shallow and fast. Because you are nervous, you start to bring oxygen only into the upper part of your lungs. This means that your body starts to react to not having enough oxygen despite your rapid breathing rate! Things start to go downhill after this as far as your muscles, nervous system, brain, and even your voice are concerned.

What’s a speaker to do? Being aware that everyone gets nervous when they are called upon to talk in public is the first step. The next is to consciously take control of your breath. If you spend some time thinking about how you are breathing, then you’ll be able to counteract the negative effects that poor breathing can cause.

How do I control my breathing? There are six steps that you need to think your way through. Your body is automatically doing the same thing; however, you need to take control and make sure that your body is working the way that YOU want it to work. Here’s your proper breathing checklist:

1. Check your posture – stand up straight!
2. Relax! (Head, neck, shoulders)
3. Nose – Yes, Mouth – No. Breath thorough your nose, not your mouth.
4. Breath deeply – fill your lungs all the way down to the bottom.
5. Exhale all the way – get all of that used air out of there.
6. Observe your breath – is it smooth and even, or short and ragged? Change it if needed.

How is your breathing when you give speeches? Have you ever thought about how you breath during a speech? Do you always seem to finish very quickly? What kind of feedback do people give you – does anyone tell you to slow down next time? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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